CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) today announced the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) results of a global study on the role of software as a business enabler.

CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) today announced the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) results of a global study on the role of software as a business enabler. In today’s application economy, it’s clear that Digital Transformation has reached every aspect of business, with India and China among the countries in the region seeing the most significant impact. Put simply, exploiting modern technology and communications to transform one or more key aspects of the business to achieve a state of digital readiness has now become a mainstream activity to drive return on investment (ROI).

In the application economy, businesses are moving at the speed of light to leapfrog their competition and accelerate the Digital Transformation of their organization. The study, Exploiting the Software Advantage: Lessons from Digital Disrupters, found that Digital Transformation in APJ is being driven as a coordinated strategy across half of the organizations (50%), with many projects underway in multiple areas of the company, including customer services, sales and marketing, and product/service development. As a result, 43% of respondents in APJ have already seen measurable increases in customer retention from their digital transformation initiatives and 42% have seen an overall increase in revenue.

The results also spurred the development of the Digital Effectiveness Index (DEI), a measurement tool developed in partnership with Freeform Dynamics. Using this measure, a group of top-performing organizations has emerged – the Digital Disrupters, identified as the top 12% of respondents in APJ.

In this elite group of Digital Disrupters in APJ, or those well on their way, respondents are already seeing impressive business benefits of embarking on a digital transition, including:Increased Revenue: Digital Disrupters in APJ have two times higher revenue growth than mainstream organizations,Higher Profits: They report two times higher profit growth than the mainstream organizationsWithin verticals, we see a strong showing from telecom, retail and consumer electronics firms with public sector, consumer packaged goods and healthcare lagging“While markets across Asia Pacific and Japan are progressing at different paces in embracing digital transformation, many are heading in the right direction and are already reaping the benefits from going on this journey,” said Stephen Miles, Chief Technology Officer, APJ, CA Technologies. “In fact, more than two-thirds (69%) of businesses surveyed in the region acknowledged that digital transformation is critical. This strongly suggests that those who don’t start on this journey soon or are at the back of the pack, will find it increasingly hard to stay competitive or even survive.”

In APJ, there is a clear set of common traits and behaviors among today’s digital disrupters. The study, which surveyed 1,442 respondents from 16 countries across nine industry sectors, including seven countries in APJ, found that Digital Disrupters in APJ are:Software-driven: Digital Disrupters were 4.3x more likely (than the mainstream) to recognize the importance of being a software-driven business (65% vs 15%)Advocates for Agile: Digital Disrupters were 2.4x more likely (than the mainstream) to fully use agile development (70% vs 29%), and in addition 2.4x more likely to have DevOps broadly in place (65% vs 27%)Open to APIs: The study found that digital disrupters were 2x more likely (than the mainstream) to leverage APIs for mobile app development (71% vs 31%), and 2.6x more likely to use APIs to enable third party apps (63% vs 24%).Additional APJ key findings of the study include:India (7.1) and China (6.9) score the highest overall in terms of digital effectiveness, where organizations have seen the most benefit and impact from digital initiatives.Web-based applications and services (36%), along with mobile technology (34%), were ranked highly for their roles in engaging customers and market development.Opening of new markets (67%), ability to act quickly on opportunities (67%) and creation of new routes to market (67%) were the top three benefits of digital initiatives cited by businesses.Among the KPIs, customer retention (43%) saw the most significant measurable benefits as a result of digital initiatives.India has the highest percentage of any country where the top person driving digital initiatives is the CEO or the main board (33%), in contrast to the APJ average of 22%.Survey Methodology

The global online survey of 1,442 senior IT and business executives was sponsored by CA Technologies and conducted by industry analyst firm Freeform Dynamics in July, 2015. It was augmented by in-depth telephone interviews with key industry executives. A total of 615 respondents were from APJ; this covered Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. For full survey methodology details, see the report “Exploiting the Software Advantage: Lessons from Digital Disrupters”.

About CA Technologies

CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) creates software that fuels transformation for companies and enables them to seize the opportunities of the application economy. Software is at the heart of every business in every industry. From planning, to development, to management and security, CA is working with companies worldwide to change the way we live, transact, and communicate – across mobile, private and public cloud, distributed and mainframe environments. Learn more at www.ca.com.

About Freeform Dynamics

Freeform Dynamics is an IT industry analyst firm. Through our research and insights, we aim to help busy IT and business professionals get up to speed on the latest technology developments, and make better-informed investment decisions. For more information, and access to our library of free research, please visit www.freeformdynamics.com.